Head of the Universities' Mission in the Eastern
Districts of German East Africa

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1918

From General Smuts to the Secretary
of the Universities Mission to Central Africa.

GENERAL SMUTS'
HEADQUARTERS,
SAVOY HOTEL,
LONDON, W.C.

18th January, 1918.

DEAR MR. TRAVERS,

I have read the Open Letter of the Bishop of Zanzibar to me
with the deepest interest. It contains a very solemn plea to
the conscience of the British people, backed up by an imposing
array of solid facts.

Yours sincerely,

(Signed) J. C. SMUTS.

MAGILA MISSION
MUHEZA, TANGA

November 7th, 1917

DEAR GENERAL
SMUTS,

You will not be surprised, I think, to hear that we who live
in German East Africa are becoming anxious about the fate of
the colony.

The British Government and its Allies have spoken with decision:
they have pledged their honour that they will fight till liberty
is established throughout the world; until no one weak people
is oppressed by a stronger race. And the President of the United
States has given the authority of his great country to this solemn
pledge.

But there are signs that some in England and on the Continent
are ready to end the war before this liberty is established.
A desire for a quiet life, and, I suppose, a lust for money seem
to outweigh in some minds the value of liberty; and tempt men
to dishonour the sacrifice of blood and sweat that others have
offered in its cause.

We are, therefore, becoming really anxious both for our Africans'
future and for the honour of our country. We are afraid that
Africa will be enslaved to Germany. We are afraid lest a small
peace party cause our rulers to break their imperial pledge to
establish liberty or die.

It seems right, therefore, that some one who knows German
East Africa should publish the true facts.

[4] And I desire to address these facts to you, Sir, for two
reasons.

First, it is right that they should be set before one who
has had experience both of Africans and German colonial rule,
so that he may understand the exact points involved. And no one
of our leaders has that experience in the same measure as you
have.

And, secondly, as a missionary bishop, I write under a serious
handicap. When missionary bishops speak of African rights, men
lend an unwilling ear, and "wink the other eye." You,
Sir, alone of all our leaders, know something of my own attitude
to Africans. If you will, you can gain for my case a fair hearing.
For you can testify that during the time I served as a porter
in your East African Force, your Coast Column took no harm from
my holding command of its African carriers. You can tell them
discipline was fully maintained, the work done to time, and that
without the loss of a single load of food or ammunition.

Shall Great Britain Betray?

Before I pass to the case against German rule in Africa, there
is one point of the greatest importance.

Many thousands of German subjects in this Colony have been
taken by Great Britain to act as porters at the front. They have
assisted our forces to kill or capture their late masters. Great
Britain took them; she could not do without them. But the Germans
had published orders to all the people, before their retreat
began, that no one was to help the English; and that any one
helping them would be liable to execution when the Kaiser's Government
returns.

Is Great Britain prepared to betray these thousands to their
late masters?

[5] We called on them to help us fight for liberty. When victory
comes, shall we dare tell them, It was our liberty, not
yours, we sought? God forbid!

But we cannot leave it here. There is a further point.

In taking German subjects as our carriers, what was our position
towards them? Were we out to enslave the conquered population,
as the Kaiser does in Belgium and France? Were we heading a rebellion
of Africans against the Kaiser? Or were we taking over the Colony
in the name of liberty?

If we hand the Colony back to the Kaiser, we stand convicted
of the very crime the Kaiser has committed: of compelling enemy
subjects to help the fight against their own country. Is it conceivable
we British could do that? And just because the people were not
white? Again, God forbid!

If we let the Kaiser have East Africa again, we shall be guilty
of a monstrous betrayal of thousands who gladly trusted us, and
followed us to the war.

A Personal Experience

Let me now turn to the question of German rule in East Africa.

I will grant, gladly grant, the efficiency of the German system;
and acknowledge no little assistance from some of the officials,
from the time they found us established here on their arrival
until within about two years of the outbreak of the war. My business,
however, is not to discuss how English missionaries get on with
German officials. We have to enquire how Germans treat Africans,
under their colonial system.

What follows is my own personal experience. I record what
I have seen and heard and know. What the indictment would be
were several men to write I [5/6] dread to think. Here is one
man's plain story. It may be well to add that I am in my twentieth
year of residence in East Africa and in my tenth year as Bishop
of a considerable part of German East Africa; that I have many
acquaintances and friends among Mohammedan and heathen Africans,
and do not live merely among Christians; and that I can speak
with the people freely in our common tongue, Swahili.

And the sum of my story is this:--

I will describe the state of things prevailing in the Colony
before the war, in ordinary times of peace, when officials were
at leisure to do their best for their subjects.

The officials are, in the main, painstaking, accessible and
conversant with the customs of their people. In civil matters
they are more or less just to the native, and ready to seek the
facts.

"They Rule Entirely by Fear"

Their failure is due to their inbred cruelty, which they encourage
their African underlings to copy. They rule entirely by fear;
and cruel punishments are their means of spreading terror throughout
the land.

For example. The Government appointed Labour Commissioners
to check the excesses of planters. On the civil side they did
much useful work. But their methods of punishing the labourers
were so cruel that they undid the good they accomplished.

Flogging is the German's pleasure. Twenty-five lashes are
given as commonly as in London, on a big day, the police cry,
"Move on." While fifty lashes, in two instalments,
are very frequently given.

Now there are floggings and floggings. The African does not
easily cry out. And those who have had to pass Government Houses
at flogging times will [6/7] bear me out that it was no ordinary
flogging that produced the shrieks to which we had to listen.
I am personally not averse from corporal punishment: it has much
in its favour. But cruelty is not punishment. The German sjambok,
of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide, is cut to damage, not merely
to hurt; the soldiers who lay it on are past-masters in the art;
and the German himself presides at the ceremony to see that no
mercy is given. To make it still more cruel, there is a notorious
"law of floggings": I hope not official, but certainly
enforced by the officials. It is this. The condemned man is not
tied up, as he ought to be. He lies on the earth, his face in
the dust or on a hard floor, as the case may be. After the first
two or three strokes he usually has to be seized and forced to
keep still. If he continues to wriggle and scream, he is liable
to receive the same number of strokes again, there and then.

Flogging Most Cruel

Again, when the punishment is over, if in his pain and excitement
he forgets to come to attention and salute the German, he is
liable, there and then, to receive the whole punishment again.
Thus while the law orders fifty lashes to be given in two instalments,
a man gets fifty at one time: twenty-five for his offence and
twenty-five for his breach of etiquette! Cruelty is a mild term
in which to describe it.

Torture is another recognized method of dealing with Africans.

The Germans always accept the word of their African underlings
against a native. In small cases a flogging settles the matter.
But if it be a case that must go to a higher court, or one that
involves stolen property, torture is employed to produce confession
or evidence.

[8] I will give two cases in my own knowledge, both of them
friends of mine.

(a) The first was sent by his German official into
the woods with policemen and sjamboks, and beaten day
by day for quite a week, until his body was a mass of wounds
and sores.

(b) The second was put in the "iron-hat."
A band of iron was passed round his head, and tightened by means
of a vice-like screw, so as to press more especially on his temples,
The agony is unspeakable.

Another dodge is to tie a string to the middle finger, pass
it back under and round the forearm, and tighten--till the man
confesses.

With a system such as this the police force can usually supply
a criminal to meet every case; and can also wipe out all private
grudges they may have against their fellow-subjects.

In fact, the underlings are as bad as their masters; and no
one dare complain. Revenge is, in my experience, always taken
on those who venture to appeal to the German.

Chain-Gang Torture

Again, the punishment of the chain-gang is a most serious
cruelty.

Eight men, or thereabouts, are chained by the neck to one
very heavy chain. They are not unchained at all till their sentence
is finished. Day and night, at all times and in all circumstances,
the eight men live and move as one, while they are entirely at
the mercy of the gaolers, who use on them freely sjambok,
heavy nailed boots, or the butt-ends of their rifles. I have
seen women in chains of a lighter kind.

Many of my friends have been through this; some have died
under it. My teachers, who were caught [8/9] during the war and
locked up because I am English, have also given me their experience
of chains. They say a flogging is preferable: they know because
they had a taste of both.

Deaths in gaol were far too common. Sometimes the Germans
would move a whole set of gaolers; but they did not act unless
things became very bad indeed. On this I cannot lay great stress,
since in the nature of things the deaths cannot now be proved.
But of the brutality and ill-treatment there can be no question:
there are so many who have suffered it.

Methods of German Police

Germans encouraged their police in cruelty. Even in the court;
before conviction, the native was knocked about by the police:
the Germans quite approved. If the accused, or his witness, did
not stand at attention strictly; if he moved his hands when making
his statement; if he called the German "master" (bwana)
instead of "great master" (bwana mkubwa); if
he showed hesitation in answering; or did not understand the
German's Swahili; or if, as often happened, he blundered in putting
his own vernacular into Swahili, the police boxed his ears or
hit him with their fists. It was the custom. It exalted the German's
dignity. That it did not serve justice was no matter.

The Government school teachers were brought up in the same
way. They were so often flogged themselves at school, that they
became great floggers. And a sjambok, freely used, was
found necessary for educating small boys of any age from seven
to thirteen. And it was laid on soundly.

In one case I came on a Government headman giving sjambok
to a boy of thirteen for absenting himself from a German
mission school. He told me the [9/10] head of the mission had
secured an order from the District officer that all absentees
were to have sjambok from the headman!

It is a disease, this flogging. It makes the Germans feared
everywhere: but it poisons the German mind, and the mind of the
African underling.

Vicarious punishment the German loves: making parents and
wife suffer for the faults of son or husband. And this not for
local offences in which connivance is suspected, but for critics
done miles and miles away.

Treatment of Native Chiefs

Another peculiarly German habit is the persecution of native
chiefs. I will give one instance out of several.

Old Mataka, a Yao of great renown in Portuguese Nyasaland,
died, leaving two sons. One inherited the tribesmen who had crossed
the Rovuma into German territory; the other received his father's
own district. The German official in Lindi at once tried to induce
the second man to move with all his people into the German sphere.
The German Mataka therefore sent a letter to his brother, warning
him not to be such a fool as to move. This letter was seized
at a German military post, read, and sent to Lindi. The writer,
one of the highest Tao chiefs, a Sultan to his own people, was
at once put in chains with rigorous labour, and after a short
time died in chains.

As a final example of German terrorism, let me add that Germans
on tour required as a rule to be supplied with a young girl at
each sleeping-place. The headmen naturally do not pick them from
their own families!

These are but a few typical examples of the [10/11] working
of the German colonial system. It is cruel, relentless, inhuman.
And the reason is that it is German. Some of the administrators
are pleasant men, kindly, affable and sympathetic with their
people up to a point. They will even drink whiskey with a chosen
African here and there! But once let them become official, and
cruelty is the necessary attitude.

"The Sjambok Ruled the Plantation"

The planters exercised great authority over their labourers.
In writing, some rules of restraint did exist: but they were
not observed much. The sjambok ruled the plantation and
the household. Fifteen lashes were quite easily earned; and twenty-five
was the normal reward for hurting your master's temper. It was
very difficult for an African to appeal to the Government against
a planter. No doubt, it should not be made too easy. But there
are limits. The penalty for making a charge that was not proved
was a year's imprisonment and at least fifty lashes. This I was
told by a Judge, in the matter of a young lad whose master forced
him to shameful practices, while my observation is that the penalty
for proving a charge was nearly as bad, since the employer took
his revenge later at his leisure.

The reason of this latitude allowed to planters will appear
later.

To sum up on this point. The German method of governing Africans
is cruelly inhuman and destructive of the native's self-respect.
It is exactly designed to make him, and keep him, the obedient
slave of a European power, for ever and a day. The fear of the
Germans is so deeply rooted in the natives that the power of
initiative remains only with those who, sharing in the administrations
of the country, act for [11/12] their own profit. As slavery
the system is splendid. Otherwise, it is sheer cruelty, and all
the Africans I know, of whatever tribe or religion, have for
years past been longing for the Germans to go from their land.

The "Splendid" System of Slavery

In every colony labour presents serious problems, and many
are the proposals made for solving them.

The German Government accepted two. It publicly and officially
forbad all forcing of labour: the rule to that effect bearing
the Governor-General's signature, if not that of the Emperor
himself. Privately, and even officially, labour was regularly
forced.

Governor Von Rechenberg, one of the best and most humane officials
I have known, himself informed me that no labour could be forced.

His District Officers informed me that if they forced labour
and were reported for it, the Governor was very angry with them;
but that if they did not force labour the shareholders of the
plantations made trouble for them at the Colonial Office.

It appears that among the shareholders are persons of such
great weight that the local officials are bound to consider their
wishes.

In this connection it is interesting to note that the Officials
cannot sell Government land: for that you must go to the German
East Africa Company (D.O.A.S.).

The forcing of labour is so managed as to put the finishing
touch to the dehumanizing of the native. It is true that in some
districts, where natives live near the plantations in good numbers,
a man is only required to put in thirty days every four months
with any employer he may be able to agree with. Under this system
the planters are, more or less, bound to treat their labourers
fairly well.

[13] Examples of Dehumanization

But in many places it is not so done. Let me give a few examples
from my own personal observation.

(1) A bridegroom seized at the church door from the side of
his bride, and kidnapped for labour at the coast a hundred miles
away.

The District Officer said he was sorry, but could do nothing.

(2) The women of a village seized and detained till their
husbands redeemed them by consenting to go to the coast for various
terms: starting at that very moment.

(3) Men collected at night from their beds, tied with rope,
taken to a German planter's camp, forced to accept journey-allowance
under threat of sjambok, and then taken to the coast as
volunteer labourers.

In one such case, the German whom I interviewed said he had
an official license for so many men from each headman; and pleaded
that his hunters always removed the rope before they produced
their captives.

(4) An Assistant District Officer summoned a large meeting
of elders. Eight hundred attended. After business was done, an
order was issued that none could go unless a young man came in
his place ready to start for the coast plantations. This official
said he hated the system, but that he had to do it.

These are typical ways in which the District Officers supplemented
the normal supply of forced labour by the headman, which was
kept up regularly in some districts, law or no law to the contrary.

Shameless Planters

The result, of course, was that some planters were quite shameless
about not providing decent [13/14] accommodation and food for
their men: sickness was rife, and deaths far too frequent.

Also, they were in a position to cheat their people right
and left. They all had their own stores, at which food and clothes
were sold, the price being written off against the labourers'
wages. The result, in view of African nature and a system of
fines, was debt, and until the debt was cleared the labourer
was held to work; unless he could get a District Officer to enforce
the law which forbad his detention, a somewhat difficult feat.
Native Commissioners did help here; but where none was to be
had, the planter triumphed. And in any case the law only applied
to labourers, or was only extended to them. Clerks and such-like
were held in bondage till the debt was paid.

This labour system assumes that a native has no private interests,
no family, no relatives, no domestic claims upon him, and no
food problem of his own. He is a solitary unit able to hoe: and
any German who can get him may take him at any moment of the
day or night, and keep him for at least one month; or with luck
three or four, or even more, months.

Conditions of Slavery

Slavery is a recognized condition under the German flag. Slaves
may be sold and bought. But no freeman can become a slave, and
all babes are now born free.

A slave is one who was bought or stolen or taken captive,
or the descendant of such an one. And also all who ever sought
a chief's protection in the old days of inter-tribal war are
now reckoned as slaves, as are their descendants.

A slave can redeem himself or herself. Prices range from 15
rupees to 75 rupees, according to age and condition.

[15] I have redeemed several hundreds at one time and another;
often to prevent the separation of husbands and wives under the
laws of slavery.

The District Officer at Lindi once told me his Government
wished to abolish the state of slavery, and had thought of 1920
as a suitable year: but it could hardly afford compensation.
The Kaiser no doubt had other ends in view for his income.

Meantime the system of slavery was much in favour with the
Germans.

A planter could get hold of slaves who desired freedom; pay
their master the money, and detain the slaves for a term of years
while they paid back a minute sum each month, the sum being fixed
by the German. Or he could deal direct with the master, and either
hire his slaves for so much a year or redeem them as already
explained without consulting them.

In the same way a German planter or official who desired an
obedient concubine could always buy one in this way. He paid
the redemption money to the master, and kept the girl and her
certificate of freedom until he had no longer any use for her.
She returned home a free woman.

The Prospect of Revenge

This point must not be missed. Viewing the possibility of
the return of Germans and the result to those Africans who have
been busy serving the English army in the colony, we may well
spare a moment to ask how in the past the Germans have treated
"traitorous" natives.

You, Sir, know the cruel fate of South-West African natives,
and the many thousands slaughtered to satisfy German thirst for
revenge.

The rebellion of 1905 in this colony cost a very few [15/16]
Germans their lives. But some thirty thousand natives were slaughtered
in revenge. Heads were paid for at the coast, one rupee a head,
after a time; in the earlier days the so-called "friendly
tribes" were permitted to massacre and rape the tribes from
which the rebel had come.

Those who knew assigned the rebellion to forced labour and
cruelty. The District Officer at Lindi, after "detaining"
three Arabs for some months, claimed to possess letters from
Cairo and Constantinople ordering the slaughter of all foreigners
and their friends.

Some of his fellows were sceptical. But he had great influence,
and I think the Anti-Islam legislation you discovered in the
German archives dates back to his discovery.

It was frightful revenge for a very small matter. What will
it be, the revenge on those who have helped the English to kill
and capture almost the whole German population? No German will
lift his head again until the country has been drenched in native
blood: it is not in him even to try! And whatever safeguards
a Peace Conference may devise, an excuse for an "expedition"
is easily made.

We know that here, at Muheza, after the sudden visit of a
British intelligence Officer and the capture of a few Germans,
several Africans were publicly hanged in the town; although no
one here had any knowledge of the coming of the little column:
it came and went like a flash.

Cruelties During the War

Of cruelty during the war it is not my intention to speak.
What Germans are in war we all know now. Africa has suffered
as Belgium and Serbia, but in a [16/17] different degree. We
can say without fear of contradiction that enough cruelty has
been shown to natives to shut the Germans out from any just claims
to govern them again.

When I was with your force I was told by those in high command
that natives had been thrown into the bush, their hands tied
behind them, to starve to death; sad that women, whose babies
interfered with the carrying of loads, had to see their babies
thrown into the bush to die.

Of brutal executions there is more than evidence enough, German
photographs supplying corroboration, while the tales brought
back to us by men who were carriers with the German forces are
damning, and my teachers who were in chains and prison because
I and my staff are English have a sad tale to tell--fourteen
died under the treatment.

I do not dwell on these things. We may be told they are due
to war madness, and the war will end. Yet I cannot pass them
by in silence. For to my mind they belong to a madness that will
not end; a madness that made the war, and, if it can, will make
another before long.

The German Attitude

It remains then for me to sum up the situation. German rule
is impossible. The German does not understand the elementary
principles of humane Government. He is efficient, he is polite,
he is correct in his behaviour and in his official attitude,
but he is a German. And being a German he sees a native as a
tool; he is cruel and inhuman, and under him the African must
become a slave, or die.

I am quite aware that some Germans dislike this system: as
some English planters assure me they [17/18] admire it. It is
none the less true that Germans, as an empire, approve it, and
Britons, as an empire, hate it.

I myself can quote cases of cruelty to natives on the part
of Britons: but they are so exceptional as to deserve silence.

We must judge things on the average. And the average German
is incompetent to rule Africans. The Peace Conference that shall
allow him to try again will be guilty of the wilful betrayal
of liberty, and of the rights of the weakest people of the earth.

There is one point raised by honest enquirers I must try to
meet.

Why, it is asked, if Germans are so cruel, have their soldiers
stuck so closely to them during the later stages of the war?

Several reasons are, on the surface, evident to us who know
both parties and the circumstances of the people.

In the first place, it is not easy to run away from a German
force. My teachers, who were carried off in chains and badly
treated, found, when they were unchained and put to carriers'
work, that escape was almost impossible. A few got away: while
several others tried and failed. Much more difficult is it for
a soldier, who may not lag behind as a sick carrier can. And
of course the penalty of failure to make good an escape is frightful!

Secondly, Africans do not fancy running away from their rations;
and therefore are not likely to do so except within reasonable
distance of home. A force far from home will have few deserters.

Thirdly, in waterless country where the few water-places are
camping-grounds for troops and porters, fugitives have a very
poor time. My teachers who did escape nearly died of thirst,
and were only saved by coming on English troops at a water-hole.

[19] Fourthly, the Germans filled their troops with lies about
the brutality of the British, and the fate of all deserters.
This we know from those who deserted early in the campaign, when
escape was easier, before the great retreat began.

Only a Matter of Time

Yet one more reason is at hand. The Germans have impressed
on their men that while, through force of circumstances, they
cannot resist the English in this Colony, yet in Europe they
are quite invincible. Their return to the colony is therefore
only a matter of time, and on their return every deserter will
pay the dire penalty of his crime. Now, Sir, you know how good
a defence the Germans have put up, and how, favoured enormously
by the size of the country and their local knowledge, a comparatively
small number of them has given us an extraordinarily difficult
task. The Africans are not fools; they admire courage and cunning;
and seeing what Germans can do here, they have without doubt
accepted their leaders' tales of England's failure at home. My
teachers in the Lindi district were officially informed quite
early in the war that Germans ruled England, that Scotland was
in Austrian hands; and Ireland? Well! Ireland had been given
to the ---- Turks! This was publicly announced at Lindi by the
District Officer at the same time that he promised widows
of English soldiers to faithful Africans!

Let it be recorded to the honour of one German, the most decent-living
planter in that district, that meeting my people on their way
home from Lindi, and hearing from them this latest news, he told
them it was lies, all lies, and expressed strong views about
the immorality of the government's policy of falsifying the news.

[20] Germans and Non-Germans

We must add to all these reasons the fact that these Africans
are very faithful to leaders whom they know well, and never more
so than when things are not going well, and it is also true that
many Germans, however cruel in punishment, have an affable way
with Africans tie whom they are accustomed, not showing the same
colour prejudice that so many Britons unfortunately possess.
Germans, I think, divide the world into Germans and Non-Germans.
Colour is a detail, concerning non-Germans amongst themselves,
so that while Africans must always fear them, with dog-like fear,
Germans may make pets of a few, pets to be kept in order with
the whip.

This last point was clearly emphasized in the proposal to
legalize marriage between Germans and African women. A bill to
this effect was taken into the Reichstag: I did not see
its fate.

Such, Sir, is the condition of slavery out of which your force
delivered the people of this Colony. And such is the state to
which some in England and on the Continent desire to restore
the Africans. In this civil area, British rule has already begun
to make itself felt, and the people are rejoicing in it. Already
the Administration has worked wonders, in spite of inevitable
hindrances due to our state of war.

Is it conceivable that any man of honour, any man of compassion,
can for a moment consider handing these Africans back to the
Kaiser's rule?

Final Plea for Liberty

And now I must have done: for I have said all that can be
contained in a letter, and quite enough to show how impossible
is German rule in this Colony.

[21] I know that your sympathy is with me, as also I know
that on naval and military grounds no sane man will vote for
restoring to the Kaiser this strategic point of attack. For once
returned here, Germany can threaten not the adjacent colonies
only, but Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa, while with
a submarine base here she can abolish all our trade with India
and the East and close the Suez Canal against us.

Yet I would make one final appeal on the ground, not of expediency
and policy, but of devotion to liberty.

The sacrifices of blood and money already made by Great Britain
and her Allies have gone far to make good their pledge that they
will be free or die.

Freedom is now within reach, and, by God's good grace, the
Entente Powers have no fear of a failure that would be a living
death.

In this hour of approaching victory, then, shall we do honour
to the blood outpoured? Or shall we rob our dear Dead of their
triumph? In our treatment of Africa we shall find our answer.
If we raise liberty to a throne so high that her scepter can
reach to the remotest African tribe, then indeed are our Dead
ones justified, and their blood avenged.

"If Liberty be Lost!"

But if, at the eleventh hour, we permit war-weariness to numb
our aspirations, peace parties to warp our judgments, and interested
counsellors to deceive our minds; if, that is, we end the war
before we have set Africa and Armenia free; liberty will have
been lost. Vain the sacrifice of blood; profitless the pouring
out of cash; worse than useless the sorrows of a broken world;
if liberty, Christ's liberty, be lost!

[22] Of course, no man who has shared the fighting will, for
one moment, question our duty of going on till liberty rule the
world. The question comes from those at home who feel the pressure
of the war, but do not see its real meaning. It is my hope that
this letter may help some of them to see what the war really
involves.

I am afraid men of my own cloth are largely to blame that
so many Christians sum up this war as "God's fatherly chastisement,"
and would welcome its speedy close as a sign of His renewed favour.
Oh! if only we could rid our minds of such cant and lying slander!
I admit our share in the sins that have made modern Europe; I
admit we pay our share of the bill those sins themselves present
against us. But God? I see God calling on the Entente Powers
to redouble their patience, and stiffen their shoulders for the
final fight. I hear Him summon us all to carry on this war till
the world-powers yield, and human liberty be crowned with Christ,
our Liberator.

"Enslaved to Cash and Caste"

The Pope reminds us that Christ is Prince of Peace. Indeed,
He is. Prince of Peace between God and man, of peace between
man and man; Prince of the universal brotherhood in which eternal
Love may be found revealed. But of a peace between ruling class
and ruling class, while the ruled are enslaved to cash and caste;
of such a peace Christ is not the Prince. The Peace of which
the Christ I serve is Prince will give "peace at home"
even to Africans. And with no other sort of peace will God wish
us to make terms.

As a last word, let me say just this. Since it is evidently
quite impossible to hold enquiries in Africa, or to refer these
questions to the people, it behoves [22/23] one who dares to
champion the Africans to throw down such a stake as will carry
conviction to the British mind. This letter is my stake. For
if the Germans return to rule here it will cost me all I hold
most dear: my work, my diocese, and my numberless relations with
the people of East Africa. All this I am glad to risk that these
people may be set free, and our Government allowed to fulfil
its plighted word, and raise liberty to a universal throne.

I am, Sir,

Yours very sincerely,

+ FRANK ZANZIBAR,

Head of the Universities' Mission in the Eastern
Districts of German East Africa